Page:From Constantinople to the home of Omar Khayyam.djvu/403

 yard where the clay was moistened, stamped, and pounded until ready to go to the potter's lathe for shaping. Yonder were great rolls of sticky earth that looked more like giant horse-collars or elongated automobile-tires than anything else to which I can liken them. Nearer by were lying smaller masses of sluggish mud, resembling in shape our baker's loaves, which the potter was kneading before giving the plastic stuff its final form.

Inside the doorway of the shop sat the skilled artizan deftly plying his trade. His foot swiftly propelled a horizontal wheel that turned a perpendicular lathe upon which his cunning hand molded the shapeless clay into a dozen different forms. The never-ceasing whir of the wheel beat rhythmic time to the play of his subtle fingers over the now responsive reeling mass. On the rude shelves of the shop were displayed evidences of his workmanship in the form of wares for sale.

That stood along the floor and by the wall.' ^
 * Shapes of all sorts and sizes, great and small.

Amid this * earthen lot ' were big jars (Una), water jugs (Jchum-i db), little pots (kuzah huchik), and bowls like those that were once intended for Omar's wine, vessels crude and vessels finely wrought, shapes all ungainly, as well as forms of graceful con- tour. I fancied I could hear them talk together in phrases from Omar's book.^ But — 'all this of pot and potter.'

The bazars were our next objective point, yet a sorry sight are the marts of Nishapur today, with its one-time extensive population now reduced to ten or fifteen thousand dwellers. A score and more of smaller towns in Persia, I think, can boast of better equipped shops than those wretched booths in

1 FG. 4 ed. 83. two thousand pots, (some) talking,

3FG. 60 (87),cf. Th. 60, H-A. 103, (some) silent; suddenly one of the

"P. bO^,'Wh.2%Z,didamduUazdrkuzah pots cried out, "Where is the pot-

guyd u khamush / ndgdh yak'i kuzah maker, where the pot-buyer, and where

bar dvard kharush / ku kuzahgar u the pot-seller ?" '

kuzahkhar u kuzah-farush, 'I saw

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